INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE ANTI-FASCIST SOLIDARITY

by Evgeny Norin Much less than the heroic defenders they are made out to be, the extremist regiment’s many crimes are well documented Ukrainian propaganda has elevated the Azov Battalion’s protracted but ultimately doomed final stand in Mariupol to heroic proportions. Adding further pathos to this sentimental story were the desperate calls for help from the commanders of the units entrapped in the bowels of the Azovstal factory and the photogenic young wives of the besieged fighters pleading with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Yet, an observant eye could also wonder about the abundance of Nazi tattoos adorning the battalion’s POWs. The fighters of the Donetsk militia even came up with a joke about capturing “large numbers of pirates and electricians” in reference to the numerous individuals with the skull and crossbones and SS lightning bolts – the widely recognizable Totenkopf and Schutzstaffel symbols – emblazoned on their skin. Western media has been bending over backwards trying to e

By Petr Lavrenin Growing numbers of Ukrainian servicemen are refusing to fight on the Donbass frontlines.Ukrainian solders are increasingly abandoning their positions and posting videos with complaints about their command. Why is the number of desertions increasing in the war-torn country? The total assistance of Western countries to Ukraine has already exceeded the country’s military budget for 2022, which was to amount to $12 billion. And this is without taking into account humanitarian donations from ordinary citizens all over the world. Very soon, Ukraine will receive another $20 billion for its military needs from the United States. It would seem that this huge infusion of funds and incessant supply of weapons from abroad should solve all the problems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, its soldiers are increasingly abandoning their positions without authorization, refusing to go to the frontline in Donbass, and publishing video messages online in which they criticize their c

A Ukranian court has ordered the assets of the country’s leading Eurosceptic party transferred to the state Ukraine’s Opposition Platform – For Life (OPPL) party was officially banned by a Ukrainian court on Monday. The Ministry of Justice announced on Facebook that all of its assets, property, and funds are to be transferred to the state. The ruling to ban the party was carried out by the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeals in the western city of Lviv, following a request from the Ministry of Justice. The OPPL had all of its operations suspended by the authorities in Kiev in March after the launch of Moscow’s military operation, and the party and its leaders were accused of having ties to Russia and being “anti-Ukrainian.” In its Facebook post, the ministry noted that Ukrainian courts have so far banned 11 so-called “pro-Russian” parties suspected of acting to “undermine the sovereignty” of the country. Before its operations were suspended, the OPPL was Ukraine’s largest opposition

by John Parker I had just left the Lugansk People’s Republic, making my way to an interview in Moscow, when I saw a 11th May CNN story claiming Russia had targeted civilians in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. This was after the bombing of a hotel and shopping center there. When such structures are bombed, one assumes that they were filled with civilians. Odessa was also the location of a massacre that took place after the 2014 coup, funded for years prior by the United States. The fascist element that was part of that coup burned the Odessa House of Trade Unions on 2nd May 2014, killing progressives, socialists, trade unionists and anti-fascists. My friend and guide during the Lugansk portion of my trip was Alexey Albu, who was inside that burning building and one of the few who escaped. At the time, Alexey was an elected member of the Odessa Regional Council. He was a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and at that time the local coordinator of Unio

100 days ago we launched our campaign to free Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich, our Ukrainian comrades who were abducted and brutally tortured by the Ukrainian regressive regime. We at the World Federation of Democratic Youth, are following with great concern this ongoing arrest, which we call kidnapping under false accusations and without the minimum human rights to call a lawyer. We reaffirm that the suffering of comrades Kononovich will be the responsibility of both the Ukrainian government and the imperialists of NATO, the European Union and the United States, who support this criminal regime. Therefore, we demand their immediate release and call for increased solidarity to stop the injustice of the abduction of comrades Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich.

Petro Poroshenko has admitted that the 2015 ceasefire in Donbass, which he negotiated with Russia, France and Germany as president of Ukraine, was merely a distraction intended to buy time for Kiev to rebuild its military. He made the comments in interviews with several news outlets this week, including Germany’s Deutsche Welle television and the Ukrainian branch of the US state-run Radio Free Europe. Poroshenko also defended his record as president between 2014 and 2019. “ We had achieved everything we wanted,” he said of the peace deal. “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.” He cited Sun Tzu’s stratagems as an inspiration for the deception. Winning a war does not necessarily require winning military engagements, Poroshenko said, calling the deal he made a win for Ukraine in that regard. Poroshenko failed to be reelected in a landslide vote for President Volodymyr

 The Russian language in post-Soviet Ukraine by Olga Sukharevskaya, a former Ukrainian diplomat If you go to Ukraine and walk through the streets of Kiev, Vinnitsa, Chernigov, or Kharkov, it may seem like you’re in Moscow or Rostov-on-Don, as the majority of the people in these cities speak Russian. At the same time, Ukraine is a country with one of the harshest language law regimes in the world. Russian, which is spoken by the vast, vast majority of the country’s population, is almost de jure banned there. How did this happen? You can, but you can’t One of the favorite phrases of Ukrainian nationalists is the sarcastic: ‘Who says you can’t speak Russian? Until 2019, when the law ‘On Ensuring the Functioning of Ukrainian as the State Language’ was adopted, this sarcasm was partially justified. Officially, Ukrainians were obliged to speak Ukrainian, but, in fact, they spoke whatever was convenient for them. And no one paid much attention, at least in the first couple of decades of indep